During our time in Sainte-Maxime and the French Riviera, we made a couple of day trips to see other near by cities and towns. Our first day trip was to Sainte-Tropez, which is just a quick 25 minute ferry ride away from Sainte-Maxime.
The ferry ride may have been the highlight of Vienne's day, she loved it!
Saint-Tropez is a gorgeous, seaside town with endless small streets filled with high end shopping and delicious sidewalk cafes. We spent the entire day strolling through the town, window shopping, people watching and treat eating.
This candy store was one of the first stores we came upon after disembarking the ferry. I'm glad I had V with me as an excuse to go in and browse among the big barrels of fun and unique candies. I let V pick out a couple of treats in addition to the ones I had picked out. I was most excited about those ginormous strawberry marshmallows, they were so darn cute and looked like they would be sooo good. Turns out, they weren't, you can't win them all. But it was fun for pictures.
We spent a long time hanging out with this pretty bird in it's gorgeous cage. It was a random, happy surprise we happened upon during our wanderings.
The day we visited Saint-Tropez was by far the hottest and most humid of our entire trip. To be honest, I didn't know if I would survive, heat and I don't mix very well. We were thrilled when we stumbled upon an oceanside gelateria that makes flower gelato cones and tops them with macarons! It was so hot, my gelato started melting the instant it was handed over to me, it's a miracle I got any photos of it. My face and hair in the above picture are also evidence of just how hot it was ...
It was such an unexpected and thrilling surprise to see they had a Laduree store in Saint-Tropez, I thought they only had them in Paris and New York! We made a mental note to come back after we had seen the rest of the town, but we didn't make it in time before it closed. It's probably a good thing, I had a whole month of European treats ahead of me, AND a lunch reservation at the big Laduree in Paris. But it was still a fun surprise to happen upon.
Saint-Tropez is absolutely gorgeous. The palm trees, the oversized flowering vines and bushes, the brightly colored buildings, all made for a day spent in a French paradise.
After a long day in the sun, we were on our way to the ferry to head back home to Sainte-Maxime to get dinner at one of our local cafes when we passed by this exotic oasis of a restaurant ...
We decided to try it out, we were not disappointed, it made for a very memorable and fun meal.
After dinner we walked along the water to the ferry dock, St. Tropez is stunning at night.
Then home to Sainte-Maxime
Another day we visited Port Grimaud which is a lovely, little seaside town known for it's numerous canals, similar to Venice in Italy.
When we first arrived, we immediately set out to find something for lunch. The first things we found were a pastry shop and a gelato stand, so baked goods and gelato it was. We also wandered through a few of the little shops located on the entrance square, V found a little machine that gave you a pet dog in a tin for a Euro. Being the aunt, I love saying yes to everything she asks me for, plus the little dogs were pretty adorable. She was thrilled with her little present, and took excellent care of her new puppy.
Showing her puppy the town
We spent the rest of our time wandering through the little streets, it is such a small town we covered it pretty throughly in just a couple of hours.
After our day trip to Port Grimaud, we went home to Sainte-Maxime to grab an early dinner. We had passed by this adorable cafe called La Maison Bleue several times and had even tried to eat there once, but couldn't get in. We arrived a little before it opened for the dinner crowd, so we made sure we were first in line to get a reservation and thus we were the first to be seated.
